August 02, 2008

Like Bush, Obama Can't Admit When He's Wrong

It's the weekend, and because I noticed something odd on the news this morning I'm going to put my regular musings on storytelling aside for the day and talk about how, like Bush, Obama can't admit when he's wrong.

I'm not a news pundit or a politically savvy lawyer turned journalist, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing the boat on this one. However, I don't think I am, but time will tell.

I remember a few years ago, when the Left in this country said President Bush couldn't admit to his mistakes or admit he was wrong when it came to WMD's, Rumsfeld, U.S. Attorney Gonzales, securing Iraq's freedom, or the war on terror.

I personally admire a person who can stick to their guns and not give up on their
ideals or beliefs due to poll pressure. A person who uses their
moral compass to get the job done, knowing they will not go
beyond what their moral compass allows. Novelist, Andrew Klavan, recently compared Bush to Batman.
Klavan says, "Doing what's right is hard, and speaking the truth is
dangerous." Like Bush, most of us have learned that the hard way.

At
the same time, I admire a person who can accept their faults when their
reasoning or agenda goes awry. A person who admits to himself, and
others, that he was wrong. I like when that person learns from and corrects
his mistakes. We've all experienced that in our own lives. None of us
are ever 100% right on decisions we've made. In most cases, we do the best we can with the information we have on hand.

During Obama's recent trip over seas during an interview with Katie Couric, Katie noted that, "...even knowing what you know now, you still would not have supported the surge." Obama, as most politicians do when they're cornered, came up with another one of his famous long-winded answers filled with a lot of uh's and stagnant pauses. He could not permit himself to admit he was wrong. That the surge did what General Petraeus and others, like his opponent, McCain, believed it would.

We've all heard about Obama's recent references to him not looking like the men on the dollar bills. Afterward, he said he wasn't referring to his race, but to his youth, his growing up in Hawaii, and other totally ridiculous comments. At the press conference Obama held this morning, he couldn't admit he'd made a mistake and say, "Yeah! it was a reference to my race. So what, I am different than any of those guys! I am black in case you haven't noticed." He then could have admitted that with today's racially charged environment, maybe he was wrong for saying it, whether his statement was correct or not.

At the same press conference this morning, a reporter asked him about his changing his mind on offshore drilling for oil. Again, he went off on some convoluted answer that was intended to cover his backside just in case drilling ends up being the short term answer to our energy problem. Again, he couldn't permit himself to admit that maybe he was wrong about drilling and that it should be the foundation of a broader energy policy to be implemented over the next 50 years, as so many others, like T. Boone Pickens have suggested.

McCain's pundits have recently tried to link Obama to Bush by taking up the mantra that Obama is as stubborn as Bush, because he's too rigid on his policy ideas. That's crazy if, like me, you want a President who doesn't blow in the wind with every poll, but willing to refine his position when necessary if new facts come in or it doesn't go against his moral values or beliefs.

So, if you're looking for a Bushlike candidate, Obama's your man. He loves exercise like Bush, He's stubborn like Bush, He won't admit he's wrong like Bush. I mean, come on, he even has a pretty wife and two daughters like Bush.